Variety article on "Crisis at Marvel"

[Wildling]

Barbie and Openheimer did well.

Well is putting it lightly. They're two of the three top Hollywood movies of the year (none of them are superhero adaptations). Barbie is the biggest movie both for the year and its studio, which validated Mattel's decision to adapt its properties to movies, and gave them an additional merchandise boost that is resulting in new movie-based dolls. Oppenheimer is the biggest biopic worldwide and one of the biggest R-rated movies as well, and while biopics from Elvis to Bohemian Rhapsody tend to work only as single movies, this validates Hollywood continuing to make them.

[Pinsir]

Either one of them have an actor's union strike getting in the way of being able to promote them?

The Flash didn't have a traditional movie promotion because Ezra Miller was so toxic, they only appeared once on the red carpet and did not do media circuit for the film. Not to mention the Flash had something around 75% Male audience because women boycotted the film over Ezra Miller's behavior and the film was widely believed 'not to matter' and so a lot of fans (like me) didn't see the film in theater.

Barbie did fine without a press tour as well. I've said before that superhero fatigue doesn't mean that the MCU is dead, but that was when I thought the floor to the Marvels was 700 mill, if it does as poorly as it looks like it will...yeah, it's over.

[Wildling]

Barbie's first weekend also made $100 million in North America from female audiences alone, even if they didn't get IMAX showings to enhance the pastel show (those screens were owned by Oppenheimer at the time).

[Bunch of Coconuts]

Barbie did fine without a press tour as well.

Wait, what?

https://time.com/6293686/margot-robb...ss-tour-looks/

[Wildling]

Wait, what?

https://time.com/6293686/margot-robb...ss-tour-looks/

Do you think that's a standard press tour? The strikes started a week before both Oppenheimer and Barbie debuted and then everybody went mum, and there's no world where at least the Barbie stars (which includes a top SNL talent) wouldn't have gone on all airwaves for several weekends after the box office got wrecked then, what you post goes to show Barbie is a heavily merchandise friendly brand, like Paw Patrol at a much smaller scale, it's been reported Barbie sales shot up 25% after the movie came up. Captain Marvel doesn't have doll variants to show for whatever they're doing to market it, as far as I know.

And just Oppenheimer did $946 million worldwide despite being 3 hours long and being rated R for sex content that could have been cut in 0.5 seconds if they really thought it would affect the box office. I don't believe for a hot minute Cillian Murphy doing social media rounds was going to move the needle up that much from that box office, Nolan maybe would have done, but who am I kidding? Almost everybody who by now bothers to go out their door to a movie theater should know whether they want to watch a Nolan movie, or not.

[inisideguy]

Little bit confused as usual. People keep saying barbie and Oppenheimer did well. Thats nice. Oppenheimer isnt a franchise and Nolan makes a movie every 3 years. Barbie and Mario are big but come on like anything else they will fade with time. People are just acting dumb. Oh look these three movies kicked butt. That doesn't mean at all that every future barbie movie or Nolan movie is going to be huge. These are not like the Marvel Franchise. I really have a hard time understanding what people are talking about most of the time on these boards. You are every year going to have big breakout movies. I dont see a trend with these things at all. Last year it was Top Gun and everyone was claiming Tom Cruise would just tear up box office this year. It didnt happen. You are always going to have ups and downs in the movie market. Breakout movies like barbie and Top gun come on and then go away. I highly doubt barbie 4 is going to be some huge hit. Seems like people just want Marvel to fail. To be replaced by what? Its not like people are flocking to the theater for other movies. Heck Im hoping Wish and Napoleon do well. I kind of think Wish will do pretty good. Im not sure about Napoleon not sure if people will flock to that or not. But these studios aint exactly pumping out big hits on a regular basis right now. Marvel or not.

[StickMin]

Sorry to the people above, but Variety is one of those Hollywood trades that are more accurate than not. A lot of this stuff would make sense unless you assume that everything is going great which is obviously not the case. Feige and co. have already said they need to rethink how they will work the MCU

Variety has been wrong and as I pointed out this writer has a history of lying

[Wildling]

Little bit confused as usual.

I can't even get past your comment about the Illumination Super Mario Bros success alone just being "big", let alone bother to dissect your entire post. Do you realize the historical context is it took 30 years for Hollywood to successfully release a successful Mario movie, despite the massive success of Mario games, and how when it happened, it more than surpassed anyone's expectations this year?

The Super Mario example is funny because for the longest time, the realm of Raimi Spider-Man to X-men movies to Iron Man leading to the Avengers that contributed to the blockbuster dominance of Marvel superhero movies was only realized when special effects with good enough talent attached to them could really realize adapting the original comics, when earlier, they relied on auteurs like Burton doing what they could with top stars and properties like Batman, when superhero movies had to show they were worth the time. Or even for comic movies in general, like the rise of Jim Carrey's career adapting The Mask (modern equivalent being Tom Hardy's Venom, which is funny because that franchise looks to be in a better place than Feige's Blade). Now with Mario we got somewhere similar, Mario was too silly/fantastical to adapt live in any form so it failed in 1993, and by now when Hollywood realized animation was the ideal format for it to launch a franchise, and when there was a long-running and beloved brand like Illumination ready to do it, SMB is the first billion dollar videogame movie. The opposite is becoming true of superhero movies. Now you have CGI show movies like Quantumania or Eternals that don't entrench with audiences for much else than that when we've had CGI spectacles for years, especially because they insist to spend $200 million or $250 million every time. At least Joker introduced a lot of people to Scorsese-isms on a comparatively dime budget.

[HollowSage]

Call me when SMB has 30+ movies. Actually they don’t even have to be all Mario movies. If Nintendo can use its entire roster of characters to dominate the B.O. then that will be impressive.

[Wildling]

Seems like people just want Marvel to fail. To be replaced by what? Its not like people are flocking to the theater for other movies.

Just for the condescending about Nolan releasing movies at only an arbitrary amount of years, and Oppenheimer not being a franchise (really? are those the only movies that exist for you, or did you miss or Ignore what I said about why biopic blockbusters should be good to the industry? or is making hundreds of millions with single movies not worth anything?), I feel like asking if you have really taken a hard look at the global top 10 this year, which is unlikely to change much for the rest of the year? Barbie and SMB alone account for more than $2.5 billion this year, and unless you put forward a rational argument about how sequels wouldn't do any money given the amount of source material, studio resources, audience goodwill, and hired talent that Barbie and SMB can draw from, the blockbuster train ain't likely to stop earlier than Eternals sequels. Beyond that, only 3 out of 10 movies are from Marvel, and one is from Sony which earned its independence by making Venom a blockbuster and earning Oscar animation love with Spider-Verse. There was a lot of talk about bloated budget flops for this years, and the bottom of the Top 10 this year (Quantumania) will remain in that conversation out of the 3 superhero movies. Spider-Verse 2 is a hit that made more money than the previous for good and earned reasons. Guardians 3 is the other hit, with the understanding this is the last Gunn Guardians movie and whatever he can continue to bring to the genre will go to DC now. Basically 3/4 movies out of the top 10 (Fast X, Mission Impossible, Quantumania, maybe or maybe not The Little Mermaid) could be said to disappoint due to bloated budgets clearly in the case of the first two (which I think had to do with pandemic delays stuff), and lower audience reception in the case of the latest. Actual bombs like the last Indiana Jones fell out of the Top 10.

Call me when SMB has 30+ movies. Actually they don’t even have to be all Mario movies. If Nintendo can use its entire roster of characters to dominate the B.O. then that will be impressive.

Yet another arbitrary figure, attached arbitrarily to a popular name. The Conjuring cinematic universe has less than 10 movies out, yet is surely getting more because the franchise has done more than $2 billion worldwide, with each individual movie costing less than $50 million, each and everyone one of them has been a hit and every proposed spin-off and spin-off sequel continues to this day including the last spin-off this year that even teased some sequel mid-credits. Might as well ask the old Hellraiser what's your pleasure quote, because odds are horror movies will keep asking you a variation of it after every single fad and trend is gone.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

In seeing trailers for The Marvels , I can't really understand how this film was green lit. I get wanting to put Monica and Ms. Marvel in a film with Carol. But this....this is what you conceived ? The trailers are not good and the film under-performing seems certain.

The silliest plot point is the whole Supreme Intelligence plot we never got and Carol never going to face SI like she pledged one minute in the 1st film and then they forgot that plot and did something else at the end.

Imagine if they did a plot involving all 3 and that instead of them switching places in a comedic way. (someone said the film literally looks like a Disney+ deal)

[Nods]

I think this was all pretty obvious I don't know why we are slandering a writer. I'm happy to hear they are going to give Blade a small budget...a Blade movie should cost like 10 million dollars and be horror focused.

[Gaastra]

Is the story anything really not known. Chapek and his banker buddy screwed marvel up. He screwed everything up and we are still getting his leftovers. Why is everyone shocked chapek screwed something up.

Call me when SMB has 30+ movies. Actually they don’t even have to be all Mario movies. If Nintendo can use its entire roster of characters to dominate the B.O. then that will be impressive.

Well, it's the third theatre film for mario after the japan 80s anime film and live film. That don't count the wreck it ralph cameos and mario 3 in the wizard or dk in pixels. Nintendo had an animal crossing theatre film in japan also. Pokemon had a live film with a second in the works, 8 animated films in america theatres and tons more in japan theatres. Heck pokemon has what over 20 films however only 8 were in american theatres plus the live film. For barbie this is movie 6 after 5 animated theatre films and that does not count her role in the toy story films. 6 films are not bad. Even snoopy only has 5 theatre films.

In seeing trailers for The Marvels , I can't really understand how this film was green lit. I get wanting to put Monica and Ms. Marvel in a film with Carol. But this....this is what you conceived ? The trailers are not good and the film under-performing seems certain.

Yet poor sharon who was ms marvel for over a decade is left out again. Why is she not here? She was ms marvel also.

[StickMin]

In seeing trailers for The Marvels , I can't really understand how this film was green lit. I get wanting to put Monica and Ms. Marvel in a film with Carol. But this....this is what you conceived ? The trailers are not good and the film under-performing seems certain.

The silliest plot point is the whole Supreme Intelligence plot we never got and Carol never going to face SI like she pledged one minute in the 1st film and then they forgot that plot and did something else at the end.

Imagine if they did a plot involving all 3 and that instead of them switching places in a comedic way. (someone said the film literally looks like a Disney+ deal)

This is the most nothing post I've ever read.
Like there's no reason given for why the plot of this movie is bad or why the trailers supposedly look bad.
And then beyond that this movie takes place nearly 30 years after the first one, this supreme intelligence plot only makes sense to do if we apparently want every movie featuring Captain Marvel to take place a decade or more before current day.

And the villains of this movie are literally the Kree so they clearly didn't forget about the Supreme Intelligence plot, it's clearly gonna play some role in the plot and villains motivations.

I think this was all pretty obvious I don't know why we are slandering a writer. I'm happy to hear they are going to give Blade a small budget...a Blade movie should cost like 10 million dollars and be horror focused.

It's not slander the writer of the article is known liar and many things they brought up were clearly only done to rule certain people or cast negativity where it was unneeded.

Like if Blade supposedly went through 4 scripts why did they feel the need to specifically mention the one where women supposedly played a bigger role than Blade?

Why specifically mention Nia Dacosta started work on another movie while the Marvels was in post production when this is a very standard thing directors do?
Steven Spielberg for example started directing Shindler's List while Jurassic Park was in post production

[Bunch of Coconuts]

Do you think that's a standard press tour?

The argument made was that there was no press tour at all, which is wrong.

If you want to debate the effectiveness of Barbie’s press tour, go have that argument; don’t move the goal posts on what someone else said.